The lack of responses to the T. B. Maston presentation may also reveal an aspect of Baptist theological scholarship that has been prevalent over the decades. Most Baptists who study history, theology, and Bible are unlikely to mine their own tradition. Few write about Maston in these days.

There is an advantage to developing programs which encourage study of Baptist churches and figures at the doctoral level. Michael is right that not all Baptist scholars need to get their doctorates at Baptist schools. Students now at U. of Dayton, Marquette, Duke, Emory, and other places will receive much from the diverse perspectives they encounter. But a few studying with a Baptist faculty who are not Southern Baptist will also help to strengthen the tradition.

Don’t underestimate Clarence Jordan’s influence. He referred to himself as “ex-Southern Baptist” because the local SBC congregation in Americus excommunicated everyone at Koinonia for “race mixing.” Jordan traveled all over the country speaking in both American and Southern Baptist congregations, camp meetings, conferences and ethics classrooms. Also, folks like Henlee Barnette (Jordan’s good friend) and others kept sending their students to investigate Koinonia for themselves–some stayed and others left inspired to find their own radical paths. Also, Jordan’s books began showing up all over the SBC and elsewhere.
I think one would be very hard put to find more than a handful of SBC progressives or radicals in the Southeast who were not influenced directly or indirectly by Clarence Jordan.

As for Barnette & Maston being the leading SBC ethicists of their day (almost the only ones for awhile), you are right on target. Barnette’s students like Paul Simmons, Glen Stassen, and others tended to become either ethicists themselves or pastors with Ph.Ds in Christian ethics who led major social social movements (e.g., W.W. Finlator). Maston’s students usually ended up in the BJC (Valentine, Dunn) or with state or SBC-wide Christian Life Commissions (Dunn, again, with the Texas CLC; others) or as missionary ethicists (Bob and Sherry Adams).

I also think that the centrist to progressive Baptist seminaries may not need to develop Ph.D. programs. We could take a page from the Mennonites at this point and say that all ministers must have a seminary degree from a Baptist school, but if they go on to Ph.D. work do it at an ecumenical school (e.g.,Union of New York, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, Chicago, Harvard, Yale, etc.). This gets us people grounded in Baptist tradition, but not ingrown–exposed to ecumenical trends.

Dr. Hankins was the only Baptist willing to interact with yesterday.

Don’t you hate that I’m not in seminars any longer to interact with your paper?

A good argument could be made concerning Barnette v. Mason. They were both the leading ethicists of the day. Honestly, I chose Maston over Barnette (who I knew as a little kid in Louisville) because Dunn was a Maston student. My thesis is on Dunn and the research on Maston has helped with that thesis.

The paper was more concerned with those involved in the Southern Baptist Convention. Jordan was a SBTS student but he quickly became an outsider to mainstream Southern Baptist life and gave up on the Convention. I believe he called himself an ex-Southern Baptist.

The influence of Jordan and Campbell was real but on active Southern Baptists - I’m not sure.

Foy Valentine said this - not about Jordan (since he lived at Koinonia, I doubt he’d disrespect Jordan).

The dissenter who chafed at the Southern Baptist models and structures according to Valentine was “the outsider, who yaps at the outside,…drinking a little whiskey, and privately just doing his own thing. They have some influence, to be sure, but it’s really pretty peripheral.”

Tom’s comment must have been deleted somehow. In the original post, I typed sex instead of six which Tom pointed out and made a joke.

TIA,

I do wonder why the CBF seminaries or certain seminaries have not put as much influence on ethics? Strapped for cash? I assume financial reasons. Though, it’s about time that moderate Baptists recover (in the schools) our social concerns. We have the BJC - but we lost the CLC.

A bigger problem for moderates is…we have no Baptist Phd or Thd programs. Baylor Religion has upped their standards to compete with Duke, Notre Dame, and Princeton.

I guess the moderate ministers of the future will settle for Dmins instead of Phds. And future moderate professors will have solely non-Baptist degrees.

Thumbs up to you for that.

I, I, I, can’t explain that slip.